You mustn't talk to the people as they come up the stairs, nor even say good-evening, only; '"Ladies will please walk this way, and gentlemen that!" And Dick went through with a pantomime performance for the benefit of Harold, who, when the drill was over, felt himself competent to receive the Queen's guests at the head of the great staircase in Windsor Castle.
'Yes, I know,' he said, '"Ladies this way, and gentlemen that;" but when am I to go down and see the dancing and get some ice-cream ?' On this point Dick was doubtful.

He did not believe, he said, that waiters ever went down to see the dancing, or to get ice cream, until the party was over, and then they ate it in the kitchen, if there was any left.
This was not a cheerful outlook for Harold, whose thoughts were more intent upon cream and dancing than upon showing the people where to go, and it was also the second time the word waiter had been used in connection with what he was expected to do.

But Harold was too young to understand that he was not of the party itself.

Later on it would come to him fast enough, that he was only a part of the machinery which moved the social engine.

Now, he felt like the engine itself, and long before six o'clock he was dressed, and waiting anxiously for his grandmother's permission to start.' 'I'll tell you all about it,' he said to her.